Woman to Woman
by rosabelle317
Summary: The only thing Emily wants for Christmas is two seconds alone with her mother.


**Notes: **I started writing this one a couple of weeks ago before that spoiler about the kids keeping a secret from Sharon came out, so this one's just gonna be a little bit AU because I wanted to write something fluffy with Sharon and Emily without anyone angsting about secrets in the background. :) Thanks for reading!

**Woman to Woman**

Emily Raydor loved her mother.

She also loved her brother.

She had since the moment her father had held her up to the big glass window overlooking the hospital nursery and pointed him out to her. In that instant, he had been transformed from an unwanted interloper to her most prized possession. He'd later become her most hated rival and a general nuisance, but beneath that, she still _loved_ him.

They'd grown out of it as they'd grown up. She would call him her friend now. He was one of her very favorite people.

There were still moments when it was necessary for her to silently repeat _you love him_ to herself. Usually the ones where she was an instant away from strangling him.

"That's a great idea," Ricky said, when she told him that she wanted to spend the night in front of the Christmas tree. "Like when we were kids."

"Yeah," she said warily, because she could already see that he hadn't picked up on the hint. "I think so."

Ricky had stolen Mom's half of the couch when she'd gotten up to use the bathroom. He lay on his back, facing her, and now he craned his neck to stare upside down at the boy in the other chair. "It's a family tradition," he said. "And you're one of us now."

Rusty, the other brother, the fidgety new brother, gave Emily a sympathetic look. "Sounds... fun."

Emily rubbed her forehead. Mom would only be in the bathroom for so long.

"Hey," she said, and stretched one leg out to prod Ricky's ankle with her toe. "Dork. I need some girl time with Mom."

Rusty coughed into his sleeve.

"Ohh," said Ricky.

"You can have her for breakfast," she offered. "I'll pay."

"Like she'd let you." Ricky rolled his eyes.

"She does that with you guys too?"

Emily looked at her brother, and they both laughed. "Yeah," she told Rusty. "I'd say she does."

Down the hall, the bathroom door opened.

Emily gave Ricky another look.

"You could've just _said_ so."

What did he think she'd been _trying_ to do?

He sat up as Mom rejoined them. "Hey, Mom? I think I'm going to take off now."

"Are you sure?" Mom checked her watch, more out of habit than anything else, Emily thought. "It's so early."

"Yeah," Ricky said. "I didn't sleep much last night. But Emily's going to hang out here awhile longer, and I was thinking. We didn't get a chance to do much the last time I was here. How about I take you to breakfast in the morning?"

Some of Mom's disappointment at having him leave vanished. "That sounds nice," she said. "We could all go."

If he weren't doing her a favor, Emily would've laughed at the way that he suddenly found it exasperating, when Mom was the one doing it.

"He means your idea of morning, Mom," she said. "Not mine and Rusty's."

Emily woke up at seven every morning. She had for years. For years before that, she'd woken up before six. She'd needed practice time or had early morning classes, or both. But, given the choice, she would rearrange the world to run on a schedule that allowed her to sleep until ten each morning. Since that wasn't an option, the very least she could do for herself was take advantage of the opportunity to sleep in while she was on vacation... even if she was waking up at seven o'clock anyway because her body only _thought_ it was ten.

"You sure you don't want to come, Rusty?" Ricky asked. "We'll find a nice place."

"Uh..." Rusty looked startled and a little uncertain as he shook his head. "You guys should go."

Mom gave each of them the look that meant that whatever they were up to, she was going to let them work it out amongst themselves. "Then it's a plan," she said, and wrapped an arm around Ricky.

He pulled her into a real hug and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Call me when you get up, okay? I'll be awake. Love you."

"I love you too," Mom said quietly, squeezing him before she released him.

"Oh my _god_." Emily lowered her voice to a whisper when Mom walked Ricky to the door to give him another hug goodbye. "I thought he was never going to get it."

Rusty looked like he was trying hard not to laugh.

"You know that you _can_ go if you want, though, right?" she said.

"Like you said. It's early." Then he paused. "Does Sharon want me to go?"

"I think..." Emily hesitated. "She'll be happy either way."

That was the thing about family get-togethers. Mom wanted them all together, and they all wanted Mom to themselves. Emily wanted time with Ricky too, but they were getting plenty of that sharing a hotel room together. They were getting so much time together, in fact, that it would be a Christmas miracle if they both made it to New Year's alive.

And then there was Rusty.

Emily wasn't sure, but she thought he was starting to get tired of being around people. Mom had gotten called in to work the first two days of her vacation so Rusty had been stuck entertaining the two of them.

... Or, to be precise about it, entertaining _Ricky_, because for reasons Emily couldn't even begin to fathom, that godawful show Rusty worked for was Ricky's favorite thing on the planet and he was happy to watch the holiday marathon while Rusty provided commentary on how they'd spent three hours on such and such scene because it took Jonny that long to learn the proper pronunciation of "affidavit."

Emily thought she'd rather do another run through of "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" and two days ago she would've sooner gouged out her own eyes.

She wasn't sure which of them was gladder Mom was back, her or Rusty. He'd stayed hidden in his room until well past noon today, though he'd been enthusiastic when Ricky suggested Christmas baking.

"No," Rusty decided, with another glance at Mom and Ricky. "It's okay. They can go."

"What are you two whispering about?"

"Nothing." Emily laughed when Mom gave her a disbelieving look, and got up from the chair to plop down on the couch. "Come sit, Mom."

"Should we watch another movie?" Mom looked at Rusty. "I think it's your turn to pick."

"Actually... I think I'm going to go to bed," Rusty said. "I'm, uh... really tired."

"Ah," Mom said.

Emily winced, and hoped he didn't think he was a good liar.

"So..." Rusty stood, and looked awkwardly between the two of them. "Uh... good night?"

"Good night," Emily said, and mouthed "thank you" when Mom wasn't looking. She'd wanted to sit down with with her mother, not run him out of his own living room.

Mom rubbed his arm when he passed her on his way down the hall. Just a quick touch, the sort that Emily could tell she did without needing to think about it, and she saw a tiny smile on Rusty's face.

Emily wasn't sure how she felt about this yet. Rusty adored Mom. That much was obvious. Mom wasn't being conned or taken advantage of, and she was happier than Emily had seen her in a long time.

But it was... new, and different, and sometimes, it was hard to reconcile what she knew intellectually with what she felt emotionally.

But again, Mom was happy and Emily liked knowing that if something happened to Mom while she was home, there would be someone there that would notice.

"Hey." Mom's hand settled on her shoulder. "Everything okay?"

"I just wanted to get you alone," she said honestly, because Mom would've noticed the two hasty exits. She wasn't an idiot. "Talk to you a little without the boys around."

She was weirdly jealous of them, sometimes, because after she had gone off to college, Ricky had gotten Mom all to himself and now Rusty did. She had too, she supposed, before Ricky was born, but she had only vague memories of that time, a sort of fuzzy impression of crawling up into Mom's lap and pressing her hands against her belly to feel the baby kick.

Mom didn't visit her as much anymore, with the new job and the new brother, and it was hard for Emily to get away. It wasn't like she begrudged Mom her happiness, either, but... moments alone with her were hard to come by, that was all.

There were faint worry lines around Mom's eyes now. "There've been a lot of changes around here lately," she said, shifting the pillows around as she came to sit beside Emily. "I know."

"Mom," Emily said patiently. "I'm still not upset about the adoption."

"Oh," Mom said, and plucked at imaginary threads on the pillow in a gesture that signified she hadn't been worried about that at all.

"You want another glass of wine?" Emily offered. "Or some tea? I'll make it for you. Or one of the cookies?"

"I'm all right," Mom said. "But if you want some..."

"I'm fine," Emily said. "I've actually been think of making some changes myself."

"Oh?" Mom said it casually, but her eyes were sharp.

"Yeah," she said. "Or... just planning ahead, I guess. I won't be able to dance forever."

She'd known that, going in. It had been worth it. It was still worth it, because she loved what she did... but at eighteen, in her first year of college, the end had seemed infinitely far away. At (almost) thirty, with some of the friends she'd made in the company retired already, it seemed a lot closer.

Mom was listening.

"Sometimes I want to go until I'm at least thirty-five," she said. "If I can. But... sometimes that seems really close, and... I don't know. Sometimes I don't know if I want to wait that long. I—I mean," she added, because she saw Mom open her mouth and she wanted to finish first. "I love my job. I've met people and gone places that I never would have otherwise. But... I don't know. Ricky's been spending more time in LA. I'm thinking maybe I do too. Probably not _permanently_—" She didn't want Mom to get her hopes up. "But I'd like to be able to visit more often."

"You know I would too," Mom said, sounding wistful. "Have you thought about what you might like to do afterwards?"

"Yeah." Emily chewed on her lower lip. "I've been thinking about going back to school, maybe. Getting a masters in choreography or something."

"You'd like that," Mom said, and Emily smiled.

"I think I would. Or I could teach. Or... I don't know. I could go to dental school. You remember Jamie? She did that. Shannon and Heather are nutritionists now. Julie went back to school for engineering."

"Is that what you would want to do?" Mom asked.

"What, become an engineer?" Emily snorted. "God, no. The choreography thing, though... maybe. We'll see. And—" She was rambling now, but now that she'd gotten started, everything was pouring out of her and Mom was just sitting there listening. "This one's going to sound a little weird."

Mom waited.

"Julie, the engineering girl," Emily said. "I heard she's pregnant. She's only a few years older than me."

"Ah," Mom said, and Emily thought she heard something knowing there.

"It's not like I want kids right _now_," she said. "I don't even have anyone to have them _with_." After six months of awkward flirting, she and the cute guy at the coffee place had established that they were both single and mutually attracted to each other. She was supposed to call him when she got back to New York. She was optimistic but if things continued at their current pace, she'd be forty-three before they even broached the subject of having children.

"But, I don't know," she said. "Before, it was kind of like, _maybe_ I want kids someday. Now I feel like I definitely want kids. In a couple of years."

Ricky might get there first. It was strange, thinking of her little brother having kids at all, and it was weirder still to think about him having them _before_ her.

"Someday," she repeated. "Now's not the right time. For... anything."

"I understand." Mom made a little fluttering motion with her hands. "It changes your life in a way you never quite understand beforehand. Being a mother."

"I know."

"That's what I thought," Mom said.

Emily looked at her.

"Your grandmothers—both of them—tried to warn me, but I thought..."

"What, that you knew everything?" So hard to believe, that.

"Oh, I knew that I did," Mom said, laughing quietly. "We read all of the books and we set up your nursery the way the experts recommended and bought the safest carseat, and... then, about a week before you were born, I realized I had no idea what to do with you. It was terrifying."

It was strange, hearing Mom admit to being scared. Sometimes she still held this image of Mom in her head as this unstoppable force who never hesitated or questioned herself, and she'd been old enough to know better for half of her life.

"When'd you get over it?"

"About eight weeks after you were born. When your personality started coming in and you still liked me."

The way Mom looked at her, sometimes. It made her throat ache.

"You always said I was a smart baby."

"You were an amazing baby. I just needed to get used to you." Mom caught herself, hesitating.

"What?"

"Your father was a natural," Mom said, her smile fainter then. "He really was."

And look how that had turned out. "Don't worry," Emily said quietly, and scooted a little closer to lean her head against Mom's arm. Her sweater smelled faintly of the cookies they'd made earlier, sugar and cinnamon and vanilla. "You showed him."

Mom made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh, and her arm settled around Emily's shoulders. "He wanted you," she said quietly. "Your brother too. We wanted you so much, and we were so lucky. You were such good kids."

Eyes closed, Emily burrowed into her mother's side. "That's not what you said the time we tried to turn the shower into a swimming pool."

They'd stopped up the shower drain with a towel and duct taped the seams where the door met the stall. It had seemed like a reasonable alternative to a pool right up until the moment Mom walked in and found them wearing their bathing suits, the window open and the screen taken out in order to run the backyard hose into the shower stall—which, Emily remembered, had at that point been filled with three feet of cold water. That moment had given them cause to reconsider the brilliance of that plan.

Mom snorted, and kissed the top of Emily's head. "I've always wondered," she said. "What were you going to do, throw Ricky over the top?"

"Well... yeah," she said. "How else?"

"Oh, God."

"It was your fault," Emily reminded her. "You should've just gotten a pool."

"How _could_ I ever forget? The guilt will keep me up tonight."

As a kid, she'd never appreciated how funny Mom was.

"It's not easy," Mom said, serious now. "It's never easy. There are things no one tells you about being a parent."

"Like?"

"Everything's always your fault, for one," Mom said, and Emily laughed before she could help it.

"I remember." She'd certainly spent enough time as a teenager telling her so. She'd failed a project because she'd put off going to the store to buy poster board and by the time she did, they were out? Mom's fault for being unavailable to take her shopping. Her boyfriend had dumped her? Mom's fault for not setting a good example.

She could still remember what Mom's face had looked like, then.

"I don't mean just from your children," Mom said, and squeezed her shoulder. "Though certainly from them too. But whatever you do, the world will tell you it's not enough. It will get to you. You'll feel irrational guilt."

"Lucky for us, we're Catholic," Emily murmured. "We're good at that. Lots of practice."

"Luckily." Mom laughed again and her tone was light, but something made Emily raise her head.

"Do you still?"

"Oh, yes," Mom said, running the heel of her palm against Emily's spine. "But some other time."

Emily tucked herself a little closer. "Mom?"

Mom hummed.

"Ricky and I—you know that we know how hard it was for you, don't you?" she said. "And that we appreciate it?"

Mom took her time answering.

In the silence, Emily realized too late that she'd hit on one of those irrational things. With a sigh, she fit her arm around her mother's waist and squeezed. "You were the best mother," she said. "I hope I'm as good as you are."

"I hope your kids are as good as mine."

Emily smiled. "I'm not a kid anymore," she said, like she wasn't sitting half on her mother's lap. "I'm old. Almost _thirty_."

"Yeah?" Mom said. "Well, I'm... fifty."

Emily snorted before she could help it, but she felt the way Mom quivered with laughter before she heard it.

Mom touched her arm when she sat up. "We got a little off topic. You okay?"

"Yeah." Emily nodded. "It just... it feels like a lot sometimes, you know?"

"I do." Mom tightened her grip. "I'll support you whatever you decide to do."

"I know."

It was funny, how much better she always felt after talking to Mom, even when Mom hadn't presented her with the magical solution to her dilemma or even given much advice at all. It was enough, sometimes, to know that when she talked, Mom listened.

"I think I will make that tea now," Mom said, and patted Emily's cheek as she stood. "Sit and drink with me, then I'll take you back to the hotel. No," she added, when Emily moved to protest. "You'll be more comfortable in a real bed, and I don't mind. No arguments. We're doing it."

Mom was impossible sometimes.

Emily tried anyway. "Maybe I really do want to sleep under the tree."

"I always hated that, you know," Mom said, speaking over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen. "Do you know how hard it was to fill your stockings when you were asleep under them?"

"You always said we were heavy sleepers."

"Not on Christmas Eve."

"Oh." Emily gave her a sheepish look.

Mom laughed quietly, a faraway look in her eyes. "Your father dressed up as Santa, just in case you woke up."

"I remember," Emily said. "I woke up a few times."

"I never knew that."

Emily shrugged, then leaned back against the refrigerator door as she watched Mom move around the kitchen. "You wanted us to think it was magic."

Mom rose up onto her toes to pull teacups down from the cabinets. "How do you feel about the red ones?"

"I like the red ones," Emily said. "I got you the red ones."

Ricky had gotten her the purple ones for the same birthday. They'd learned to coordinate better after that.

"What kind do you want?" Mom asked. "Something festive? I've got peppermint around here somewhere..."

"I'm going to have two sips of tea. Pick whatever you want."

"I could've made you some coffee."

Emily shook her head as she watched Mom rifle through the drawer where she kept her tea. She couldn't quite read the lettering on the one Mom actually chose, but the package was red and Emily thought she saw a candy cane featured on the wrapper.

She and Ricky liked Christmas. They liked it a lot, even, but Mom loved everything about it. Emily wasn't sure yet how Rusty felt, but he seemed fairly immune to the decorations.

Christmas was for Mom.

"Hey," she said suddenly. "I have an idea. Put the tea in a travel mug instead and let me drive back to the hotel. We can take the scenic route and drive around looking at Christmas lights."

"Oh," Mom said softly. "We should."

"C'mon."

Mom smiled. "Let me go tell Rusty where I'm going."

Emily only hesitated a moment before she said, "Invite him."

It was worth it, to see Mom's face light up. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she said. "Go get him. I'll make your tea, and I'll text Ricky. He's coming too. Does Rusty want tea?"

Mom just laughed, at that. Emily waved her off to find her shoes and her other kid, and pulled her phone from her pocket while she waited for the water to boil.

_Hey,_ she sent. _We're coming to get you. Be there in 15. Hope you're still wearing pants._

She hadn't set her phone down when it buzzed at her. _What? Why?_

_Cuz I said so. I'll bring you tea._

_Fine._

_Peppermint._

_:(_

_It's festive._

_You sound like Mom._

_Yes or no?_

_I guess._

Emily decided to err on the side of making more tea and took his reply as a "yes, I guess I do" instead of an "I guess not" because if Ricky didn't drink it, God knew Mom would. She screwed the lid in place on the second mug just as Mom and Rusty emerged from Rusty's bedroom. They were both wearing shoes now, though Rusty had just thrown a sweatshirt on over his pajamas. Mom was walking with her hand on his shoulder and her head bent close to his ear. Emily couldn't guess what Mom was saying to him, but she was smiling again and Rusty was nodding his head.

She left the cookies where they were, in a tupperware sitting on the counter. Mom didn't welcome crumbs all over her car, not even on Christmas.

Carefully, Emily took one mug in each hand. She brought one to Mom and handed the other to Rusty. He could either hold it or put it in a cupholder once they got to the car. He lifted the mug closer and sniffed at it curiously, wrinkling his nose when he realized what it was.

"Everybody ready?" Mom asked, and Emily had the impression that if she hadn't been holding the tea in her hands, she would've been a lot less restrained in her movements. Instead, she walked slowly to keep the mug level, and her other hand slid to grasp Emily by the crook of her arm. "You called Ricky? Okay. Let's go, then."


End file.
